Trending News: A Day In The Life Of A High Line Worker Looks Terrifying

Why Is This Important?

Because the monotony of office work all of a sudden doesn't seem so bad.

Long Story Short

A video shows what it's like to be an inspector working on high-voltage power lines, and it's mostly terrifying. A helicopter is required to even access the lines.

Long Story

Most people don't like their jobs, but that's largely related to environmental issues. That is, things like annoying, incompetent coworkers, overbearing bosses or unfulfilling work. But in reality, our office complaints have nothing on men who work outside for a living, like power line repairmen. Their jobs are routinely among the most dangerous in America, but that's largely to do with the fact that dealing with electricity is doubly dangerous in inclement weather, and power lines tend not to break on calm spring days. But as this video shows, you don't need a severed live wire for the job to be dangerous — just inspecting power lines is enough to make your stomach drop.

When your job requires a helicopter just to get to the job site, you know you're in for a long day. Climbing the incredibly high poles that carry remote, high-voltage lines would probably be even more dangerous, and shutting down power for inspections would cause a huge disruption. The solution is to fly over, clip in and traverse the lines while they're still active, not unlike birds.

The workers wear special suits that insulate them from the electricity (plus, it never gets the chance to go to ground), and proper safety precautions should ensure that they're never at risk of falling all the way to the ground. But still, one gust of wind and balance becomes precarious. That's to say nothing of the fact that, personally, I'd be shitting my dick just on the helicopter ride there.